Minerva Foods still silent on Tammin, Esperance abattoir closures

Brazilian agribusiness big Minerva Meals failed to say it has closed each of its Western Australian abattoirs in its quarterly monetary replace launched to shareholders final week.

The corporate closed its Shark Lake abattoir in Esperance in late 2023 and its Tammin abattoir this 12 months. 

Each processed sheep and lamb.

In each cases Minerva supplied a near-identical message to stakeholders within the hours previous to closure that the corporate would weigh up the amenities’ futures.

“MFA have taken the choice to undertake a evaluation of operations at Tammin to completely analyse what additional funding is required,” Minerva Meals Australia chief government Jason McPhail mentioned in an announcement in January.

“The place doable, workers might be redeployed to different amenities within the MFA group with a small quantity taking over redundancies.

“All current meat orders might be fulfilled by MFA by way of their operations in Victoria.”

Minerva has no different working amenities in Western Australia to deploy workers to.

Communities and stakeholders reliant on each amenities have spoken of being blindsided by the selections, and of listening to nothing from Minerva for the reason that closures.

In an replace revealed to the Brazilian inventory change on Thursday final week, Minerva Meals informed shareholders it had 4 manufacturing centres in Australia.

“The corporate has 4 vegetation in Australia with a day by day capability of 19,216 head,” the assertion mentioned.

Nowhere was it talked about two of these abattoirs have been mothballed. 

Minerva has not said in its market communications that half of its Australian manufacturing capability was offline, so far as Enterprise Information can inform.

The corporate’s media and government workers in Australia and abroad haven’t responded to greater than eight months of calls, emails or social media messages to debate the closures.

Minerva’s quarterly financials recommend the Australian operation was performing strongly.

Minerva Meals Australia’s sheep slaughter elevated 16 per cent to 1 million head within the final quarter and totaled 3.7 million head for the 12 months.

Income was up 40 per cent to R$619.7m ($173m) for the quarter, and up 18 per cent to R$2.3bn ($651.5m) for the 12 months.

Australia accounted for about 6 per cent of Minerva Meals’ international income in 2024.

Enterprise Information understands Minerva minimize senior workers roles in Western Australia final 12 months.

Mr McPhail was contacted for remark.